1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to photonic integrated circuits, and, more particularly, to optical couplings to photonic integrated circuits.
2. Description of the Related Art
Photonic chips are part of an emerging technology that uses light as a basis of operation as opposed to an electric current. Photonic chips are expected to be a fundamental building block of interconnect networks in future computers that offer faster processing speeds with low power consumption. Furthermore, photonic circuits could be directly incorporated into processor chips to achieve tight integration of electronic and photonic circuits. An advantage of using light as a basis of circuit operation is that its energy cost for high-speed signal transmission is substantially less than that of electronic chips. Thus, efficient coupling between photonic chips and other optical devices, such as fibers, that maintains this advantage is an important aspect of photonic integrated circuits.